World News: Life Beyond Earth

For the past several years, scientists have been avidly searching for life beyond Earth. In fact, the ultimate goal of astronomers is to find “another Earth.” In the past few years alone, there have been some huge scientific and technological advances made in regards to this research. For instance, scientists now know that there are at least 100 billion planets, which is something scientists did not even know until 2009.Telescopes are credited as a major tool for finding out about signs of life beyond Earth. The Kepler Space Telescope, which was launched in 2009, was able to make great discoveries in regards to another “Earth-sized planet.” Next up is the James Webb Telescope, which will be launched in 2018. It will be over 930,000 miles from Earth’s surface. Scientists and researchers are excited to see just how much it will contribute to making even greater strides toward finding “another Earth.” And even though finding planets the size of Earth is tricky since they send out fainter signals, astronomers are still using all the resources they can and continuing the search for life beyond our planet.